News & Events

EIT Digital launches GameBus: an innovation based on social health games to promote healthier lifestyles

EIT Digital started GameBus in 2015 through the Digital Wellbeing Action Line*. The idea came with the acknowledgment that as the European population is aging and are caught by the busy schedules of different daily duties, it's always a challenge to find a balance between work-life and leisure activities.

Why GameBus?

The GameBus team analysed that the expected mobility of active workers puts additional pressure on achieving this balance. At the same time, there is an economic need and corresponding political pressure for keeping the elderly longer at home, independent of managed care. Unless society provides new ways to empower European citizens, the anticipated economic benefits will be hindered by excessive pressure on families and home care organisations.

For these reasons, GameBus developed an easy-to-download social health games app, that stimulates interaction between groups of people like family members, employees or ordinary citizens. The result is a personalised gaming experience encouraging people to stay socially, mentally and physically active.

Achievements in 2016 and 2017 plan:

Pieter Van Gorp, GameBus Activity Leader says: "In 2016, we have developed five pilots across the Netherlands and Italy. We signed our first customers: a sports center with 12,000 members, Aireas.com, the city of Eindhoven and a Belgian municipality. Our Android and iOS apps have also been downloaded more than 500 times and also, thanks to our browser version, we exceeded the milestone of 1,000 users. In 2017, we are working on integration with a business partner's platform. We are also looking to close a large deal with an occupational health provider and of course we are working on finding investors."

GameBus will attend EIT Digital's Partner Event 2017 and will exhibit their product on the EIT Digital Conference on 21 March 2017.

For who is GameBus?

B2B markets

European companies investing in the wellbeing of their employees

Cities or regions wishing to attract health-aware workers

Home care organisations wishing to activate the social/family circles of their elderly clients

End Users

Active workers, struggling with the balance between work-life and leisure activities

Employees with poor motivation to live healthily

Citizens living in deprived neighbourhoods with bad health habits

Elderly or disabled people who lack systematic family support

Europe, with a focus on Benelux, France, Germany, UK and Italy

GameBus enables end users to define new health competitions without programming. It calculates scores for activities of different kinds and for different users.

For example, elderly users are able to play their favourite brain training game (e.g. Sudoku) while joining forces with their younger peers who go out for a physical activity (e.g. running).

*EIT Digital seeks to generate significant innovations from top European research. As such, we focus our investments on a limited number of innovation areas known as Innovation Action Lines, that we have selected with respect to their European relevance and leadership potential. Each Innovation Action Line comprises a portfolio of activities including:

open innovation activities carried out by the EIT Digital Partners and

fast-growing technology startups that are ready to scale commercially.

Our Innovation Activities deliver new products or services, create startups and spinoffs to commercialise outputs from projects and encourage the transfer of technologies for market entry.